ELT Students’ Attitudes towards Plagiarism in Writing Argumentative Essays

Plagiarism cases have increasingly occurred, especially in higher education, and Universitas Negeri Malang is one of universities in Indonesia that concerns about plagiarism cases. However, there are only a few studies concerning plagiarism that have been conducted in Universitas Negeri Malang. As EFL learners, ELT students are more likely to be exposed to plagiarism issues and might have committed plagiarism either intentionally or unintentionally. In order to prevent unexpected attitudes that may lead to plagiarism cases, this study used surveys to investigate the ELT students’ attitudes towards plagiarism in writing argumentative essays in terms of their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. The subjects of the study were ELT students who were taking an Argumentative Writing course. The findings show that the majority of the ELT students have unfavorable attitudes towards plagiarism in writing argumentative essays. Even though some students show favorable attitudes and tend to approve plagiarism issues in certain situations, this study has confirmed that the students have generally understood about plagiarism, and they tend to perform unintentional plagiarism rather than intentional plagiarism. The favorable attitudes found in this study are mostly caused by the unclear information and policies concerning plagiarism, and the students’ competence in writing.


Introduction
Plagiarism is known as a phenomenon of dishonesty in society. Pecocari (2003) uses the term textual plagiarism to refer to a person who does not acknowledge the work of other authors. Fishman (2009) also describes plagiarism as the action of not attributing the used words, ideas, or works of an identifiable author to the source from which it was obtained. In other words, literature works, especially writings, are under the authority of the original writers in which the works cannot be claimed or even copied without the permission of the authors. Therefore, quoting words or ideas from others' writings without providing the original sources as a reference is considered as committing plagiarism.
Many studies have found several factors that encourage students to commit plagiarism; the unclear concept of plagiarism, lack of deterrence policies, lack of understanding of the rules of citation, poor time management, laziness, and others (Silfiani, Aziz, & Daud, 2018;Park, 2003;Marshall & Gray, 2005). The degree of acceptance of plagiarism is different from one person to another. Since the concept of plagiarism depends on the understanding of oneself, people may have different beliefs about plagiarism. In other words, there is no standard or agreement for the definition of plagiarism. Therefore, Fishman (2009) suggests that to understand clearly about plagiarism, people must first agree on a definition that is accurate and makes sense.
Correspondingly, some studies have found that the growth of plagiarism is affected by the lack of deterrence policies (Bahadori et al., 2012;Darwish & Sadeqi, 2016). Many students found the benefits of plagiarism outweigh the risks. This is due to the little punishment that the students found when they or their peers committed plagiarism.  found that Australian and Indonesian universities treat plagiarism differently. Compared to Australian, Indonesian universities do not have systematic and clear policies regarding plagiarism. This, indeed, affects the growth of plagiarism in Indonesia.  suggests that in order to deal with plagiarism issues in Indonesia, there should be a thorough policy about plagiarism including the definition, various forms, and methods to avoid and manage plagiarism issues. Similarly, Adiningrum and Kutieleh (2011) found that the students considered the concept of plagiarism as a foreign concept for them. This study shows that the concept of plagiarism and its policies do not get much attention in some universities in Indonesia. Teeter (2015) and Sibomana et al. (2018) point out that uncertainty with the cited material, inadequate training in paraphrasing and the inability to understand the rules of citation contributes to the widespread plagiarism cases among students in higher education. The inability to paraphrase texts gives a big contribution to the growth of plagiarism cases. Khrismawan and Widiati (2013) found that many students faced difficulties in paraphrasing as it is hard for them to maintain the meaning of the paragraphs that they paraphrased and avoid plagiarism at the same time. In other words, despite the importance of the clarity of the rules, it is also important to give training about plagiarism and its policies to the students. Many plagiarism acts found in higher education, especially university level, are in the form of academic writing. Writing itself is considered as a challenging skill which is a result of many other activities or skills such as reading, paraphrasing, sequencing, spelling, providing supporting examples, and other microskills and macro skills for writing (Wallace, Stariha & Walberg, 2004). For English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, writing plays an essential role in mastering the language. It involves a process of expressing ideas or thoughts and turning it into words, sentences, and paragraphs (Nunan, 2003). In writing, students deal with several activities that likely encourage them to commit plagiarism. The plagiarism cases may occur if the students are stuck in finding ideas, or they cannot think clearly because of a difficulty in developing the ideas. Widiati & Cahyono (2006) conducted a study concerning the teaching of EFL writing in the Indonesian Context. They stated that since English is a foreign language, it is only taught as a subject in Indonesia. Hence, few primary and secondary schools teach writing for a communication type. It means that many EFL students in Indonesia do not experience the ideal process of writing. Many of them are just given some sentences in the form of exercises, or are asked to copy paragraphs or do paragraph translations. However, in higher educational institutions such as universities, EFL writing has been taught as a more complex skill in the Indonesian context depending on the level of the institutions (Widiati & Cahyono, 2006). Based on several studies, the process of writing takes longer for EFL students, and many EFL students find it difficult to avoid plagiarism in composing good writings. Hayes (2003) stated that the students may be uncomfortable with the language, and the process is different from what they have learned and known in their own countries. Thus, for EFL students, there is a big possibility to commit plagiarism as they are considered as a second language writer (Teeter, 2015;Flowerder & Li, 2007). Gullifer and Tyson (2010) argue that there is some merit in understanding and learning about students' perceptions of plagiarism in order to find and develop an appropriate strategy to promote academic integrity and prevent plagiarism. The way the students think about plagiarism might also influence their attitudes towards plagiarism in which the lecturers may not expect the students to have them. To modify the unexpected attitudes, the lecturers have to understand first about the students' attitudes towards plagiarism. Ajzen (1993) stated that attitudes affect behavior. He pointed out that someone's experiences will form beliefs about an object in which those beliefs produce an attitude toward the object. He also stated that the attitudes that remain stable over time and situation later will form a favorable or unfavorable reaction. In other words, in order to evaluate someone's behavior, it is also important to learn about their attitudes. Thus, in this study, a Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) by Ajzen and Fishbein is used. Mavrinac, Brumini, Bilic-Zulle & Petrovecki (2010) stated that the Theory of Planned Behavior has been a suitable theory to evaluate beliefs, attitudes, behavioral intentions and behavior in public relations, advertising, health care, and also appropriate to predict dishonest intention and actions. The theory believes that human behavior is guided by three conceptual considerations which are behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs that lead people to do their intentions (Ajzen, 2006).
Behavioral beliefs refer to students' beliefs about plagiarism regarding which degree the students approve or disapprove of the action of plagiarism. Students' approval or disapproval toward plagiarism indicates whether they have a positive or negative attitude towards plagiarism. Next, the normative beliefs deal with the influences of social pressure; in this case, the students' environment that leads the students to perform plagiarism or not. In other words, normative beliefs refer to the students' personal beliefs about how other people think of plagiarism in the academic field. It leads the students to evaluate and decide whether they approve or disapprove of the people's common thinking of plagiarism. Control beliefs increase the perceived behavioral control. It refers to someone's belief in the ease of difficulty in performing plagiarism. The control beliefs deal with students' beliefs whether they are able to perform plagiarism or not according to the ease and the difficulty that they may face. In other words, it refers to the students' beliefs about the occurrence of factors that may influence them to commit plagiarism or not easily. The perceived behavioral control has an important role in predicting people's preferences in performing a behavior (Ajzen, 1993).
A few studies have been done to examine plagiarism in English Department in Universitas Negeri Malang. Some lecturers in the Department of English have, indeed, warned the students not to do plagiarism during their course, yet some students might do it either intentionally or unintentionally. Some lecturers have emphasized the rules of plagiarism in their courses, yet only a few of them gave appropriate consequences for those who commit plagiarism. Due to this lack of deterrence policies, many students find the benefits of plagiarism outweigh the risks. However, there are probably many more reasons why students plagiarize. EFL students, who are considered as a novice or the second language writers, have a greater temptation to commit plagiarism (Flowerdew & Li, 2007). Thus, ELT students who take an Argumentative Writing course may have a great temptation to plagiarism. If the students' attitudes towards plagiarism in writing Argumentative essays are found favorable, there is a possibility that the students might commit plagiarism in writing their thesis. Therefore, it is important to examine students' attitudes towards plagiarism in the context of writing an argumentative essay.

Method
This study used surveys as the research design. The subjects in this study were 86 undergraduate English Language Teaching (ELT) students who were in the fourth semester at Universitas Negeri Malang. The fourth-semester ELT students were chosen because at the time of the data collecting process, they were taking the Argumentative Writing course. The instruments used to collect the data in this study are an online questionnaire and an interview guideline. This study adapted the ATP (Attitude toward Plagiarism) questionnaire developed by Mavrinac et al. (2010) and the questionnaire that is based on Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) used by .
Then, the researcher modified the questionnaires in order to meet the objective of this study. Moreover, the questionnaire items for the third aspect, control beliefs, were developed by analyzing how the third aspect of TPB was used in other studies. According to Ajzen (2006) and Curtis, Cowcher, Greene, Rundle, Paull & Davis (2018), the questionnaire items indicating the control beliefs likely begin with the word "I expect," "I can," "I will," or "I should." The number of items in the online questionnaire can be seen in Table 1. In tabulating and analyzing the data, a system point value was assigned in this study to each choice made by the students. Since the format of the online questionnaire is a Likert-type scale with four options; Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree, the score for each option ranges from 1 to 4. The system point value for the questionnaire can be seen in Table 2. Moreover, the data of the online questionnaire were also analyzed by interpreting the tabulated data, namely the percentage of the students' responses to the online questionnaire's items and the number of students who gave the responses for each item. Those data were obtained from the Google Form where the calculation was automatically tabulated. As there are three aspects with four factors measured in this study, the analysis for each factor is different from each other. The total score for the four factors and the indication can be seen briefly in Table 3. After collecting data through the online questionnaire, there was a follow-up action on the responses of the online questionnaire by doing interviews. The interview guideline involved several questions related to the online questionnaire in order to gain deeper information about the subjects' attitudes towards plagiarism. Due to the recent issue of Covid-19 and the social distancing rules set by the government, the interview that was planned to be conducted personally, face-to-face with the respondent, was conducted through online platform i.e. WhatsApp. The results of the interview were used to strengthen or support the finding of the online questionnaire.

Findings and Discussion
Based on the data of the online questionnaire and the interview results, it can be concluded that the majority of the ELT students have unfavorable attitudes towards plagiarism. In other words, almost all of them are against plagiarism, especially in writing Argumentative essays. At the same time, some of the students show that they have favorable attitudes towards plagiarism in which it means sometimes they can approve plagiarism issues in certain situations.

Terms of Their Behavioral Beliefs
In this aspect, the positive and negative attitudes of the ELT students towards plagiarism in writing Argumentative essays are examined. As Ajzen (1993) states that the attitude toward the behavior refers to the degree to which someone has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation of certain behavior, the ELT students' behavioral beliefs refer to a degree where they can or cannot tolerate plagiarism actions.
ELT students have already understood the basic idea of plagiarism. They have known that plagiarism is unacceptable and should not be done. The result shows that the majority of the students (93%) agree that plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity, and most of them also believe that plagiarists do not belong to the scientific community. In composing Argumentative essays, students sometimes need to use other people's ideas to support their arguments and opinions. Fishman (2009) states that the action of not attributing the used words owned by an identifiable author to the source from which the words were obtained is plagiarism. Based on the result of the online questionnaire, more than 50% of the students have understood that they always need to cite the sources of the ideas that they use in composing their essays. However, the rest of them agree that sometimes they cannot avoid using other people's words without citing the source.
The ELT students' positive attitudes are also shown by their agreement that it is fine not to attribute the words to the source if the ideas are the same as theirs. However, if the students unknowingly use the same ideas that have been stated before by the original authors in their essays, it is considered as unintentional plagiarism. According to Maurer, Krupper, andZaka (2006, cited in Bahadori et al., 2012), due to the wide amount of knowledge in the scientific area, a person may unknowingly present ideas similar to those of others.
It is unfortunate that the number of students who show a favorable attitude is quite big. As the students did not get enough knowledge about plagiarism and the rules of citation, many of them do not really understand how to cite or write the references. Sibomana et al. (2018) point out that one of the contributions to the widespread plagiarism in higher education is the inability of the students to understand the rules of citation. However, the result also shows that 70% of the students agree that the references should be written accurately, which is a positive sign. It means that if the students understand about the rules of citation, or get adequate training about citing and plagiarism in writing essays, there is a big possibility that the students can avoid plagiarism acts in composing their essays.
Based on the ELT students' responses, 70% of them show that the difficulties they face while writing their essays might enforce plagiarism on their process of writing. In writing their essays, the students need to have adequate understanding not only about paraphrasing, spelling, grammar, punctuation, or quotation, but they also need to master the skills of critical thinking, expressing and developing ideas, choosing words, and many others. Therefore, the students' inability to find ideas, choose the right words, express and develop the ideas into good writing leads them to translate some words from Bahasa Indonesia to English.
The majority of the students have understood that writing involves a creative process. More than 80% of the ELT students believe that committing plagiarism means the students deny themselves the chance to develop their writing skills and other related skills. They agree that plagiarism is a misuse of the creative process. However, most of the students also admitted that the creative process is not easy. They said that finding ideas to start working on their essays is challenging.
The above discovery shows that even though the ELT students have already understood about the idea of writing and plagiarism, their favorable attitudes towards plagiarism still exist in a certain situation that places them in a condition where they cannot avoid plagiarizing. In order to master, at least, some basic competencies in the process of writing, especially an Argumentative essay, students have to go through a long time process of training. This is because the process of writing needs to be done continuously so that the students will get used to writing, find and express ideas, and also learn the other competencies such as paraphrasing, quoting, and others at the same time. The researcher believes that giving adequate training of writing will help students to step by step master the writing skill and the other competencies needed in the process of writing.
Correspondingly, the findings also indicate that the ELT students may have greater temptation to perform plagiarism in writing their Argumentative essays. Hayes (2003) says that EFL students need more time in the writing process because they may be uncomfortable with the language and the process of assessment. Flowerdew and Li (2007) states that EFL students, who are considered as a novice or the second language writers, have a greater temptation to commit plagiarism. In other words, as the ELT students are EFL learners, there is a big possibility that they are tempted to perform plagiarism if they face difficulties in writing their essays. Moreover, the ELT students' negative attitudes towards plagiarism are also shown by their beliefs towards the temptation of getting better grades for their essays. The result presents that 90% of the ELT students may think that committing plagiarism will not help them to get a better grade for their essays because it does not always guarantee them to write good argumentative essays.
The lack of information about plagiarism is one of the reasons why plagiarism becomes common among students. Having an experience as an ELT student, the researcher believes that the lack of clarity about plagiarism might encourage ELT students to perform plagiarism intentionally or unintentionally. Similarly, there is no clear information about plagiarism among ELT students that makes the students confused about what is and what is not plagiarism.
The findings also show that 62.8% of the students agree that using material from the Internet for their essays is acceptable even though they do not cite the sources. This is because all the information on the Internet can be accessed by everyone. Hence, it may lead to the belief that all the information on the Internet is free to be used by everyone. According to Sisti (2007), the facilities provided by Information Communication Technologies (ICT) such as the Internet contribute to the students' committing plagiarism. The researcher believes that the ease of accessing material on the Internet would probably give the students more temptation to perform plagiarism in writing their essays.
Regarding the understanding of plagiarism among the ELT students, the result shows that more than 40% of the students admitted that it is okay for them to copy their own previous essays to complete the essays that they are still working on. This is considered as selfplagiarism. Based on Halupa andBolliger (2013, cited in Doro, 2014), self-plagiarism is the reusing and resubmitting of sections of the students' own papers or resubmitting their assignments in order to gain credit in other courses.
In relation to the above explanation, the findings present that ELT students might commit plagiarism due to the short time of deadlines. Sometimes when the students have a short time to finish their essays, they would consider plagiarizing. This is due to the efficiency that the students may get by plagiarism in writing their essays. It is 21% of the students who can approve plagiarism due to the short time that they have to finish their essays. This favorable attitude is probably raised because, as EFL learners, the ELT students need more time to write in English, which is not their own language. Thus, when they do not have much time left, they might be triggered to commit plagiarism in composing their writing. This also shows that students might have poor time management.
However, there are still some of them who show that they have favorable attitudes towards plagiarism. This condition should be investigated more, so the reason behind the students' disagreement with the related statement can be found. Almost half of the students agree that the form of the punishment should not be embarrassing for the plagiarists. Some of them believe that the suitable consequences for those who committed plagiarism in their classes are by reducing the scores, making new essays, or retaking the course in the next semester.

Terms of Their Normative Beliefs
Students' behavior is also guided by the normative beliefs that give a result to the subjective norm to perform or not to perform a certain behavior. Ajzen (2006) states that human behavior is influenced by normative expectations of others (normative beliefs) that result in perceived social pressure or subjective norm to perform or not to perform the behavior. In other words, how other people think of plagiarism would affect students' attitudes about plagiarism.
Studies conducted by researchers, for example Park (2003) and Marshall & Gray (2005), have shown that there are many contributing factors to the growth of plagiarism, one of which is students' learning environment. As plagiarism might become common in the ELT students' environment, the majority of the students' responses indicate that the students believe in the existence of plagiarism issues in their environment. However, most of the students' unfavorable attitudes are also presented by their disagreements about the statement that says their environment can tolerate plagiarism. This shows that the ELT students have already known that the English Department, the faculty, and Universitas Negeri Malang take plagiarism seriously.
Half of the students admitted that they might plagiarize when they know that everyone else is doing it. The growth of plagiarism is also affected by the lack of deterrence policies in which many students found the benefits of plagiarism outweigh the risks (Bahadori et al., 2012;Darwish & Sadeqi, 2016). Based on the findings of this study, the researcher believes that the unclear policy concerning plagiarism and the lack of deterrence policy might give rise to the growth of plagiarism issues in ELT students' environment. Some of the students may believe that it would be okay for them to perform plagiarism because, based on their experiences, their friends or seniors who plagiarized did not get appropriate consequences.
Above all, the finding also presents a good sign in which 93% of the students believe that they do not commit plagiarism even though they have not been caught yet. It means that even if they have a chance to do plagiarism without getting caught, the students will not commit plagiarism. This result surely gives hope because it shows that the number of students who believe that plagiarism is an intolerable act is more than those who show favorable attitudes towards plagiarism. The researcher believes that the students' uncertain responses might be led by the lack of understanding and the lack of deterrence policy about plagiarism.
The number of students who show favorable attitudes towards plagiarism is more in terms of normative beliefs than behavioral beliefs. This shows that the students actually had already understood that they should plagiarise. Their personal beliefs know that plagiarism is not acceptable. However, in certain conditions, including the influence of their environment, students cannot avoid plagiarism.

Terms of Their Control Beliefs
Students' intentions to perform a certain behavior is also led by the control beliefs. This factor deals with students' self-efficacy. According to Ajzen (1993), students' control belief is a better predictor to predict students' behavior. In other words, whether the students have an intention to perform plagiarism, it can be seen through their confidence in performing such behavior.
The researcher found that the majority of the students prefer to use materials that have an author. More than 65% of the students admitted that they would not use a paragraph that has no author without citing the source. It is also found that 60% of the students are confident that it is hard for them to paraphrase a paragraph from published materials and use it without citing the source. In other words, the students might have difficulties in citing the source when they find materials that have no author.
Favorable attitudes towards plagiarism are shown by the majority of the ELT students' control beliefs about self-plagiarism. Mostly the students believe that the decision to use their own previous essays to complete their current essays is on them. However, it is assumed that the majority of the students will not cite themselves as an author of their previous essays. They probably use the idea, paragraph, or even the whole essay as it is new. In contrast, 65% of the students are sure that they will always cite the sources where they get ideas to compose their essays. This indicates that the students need to have a thorough discussion about plagiarism.
The findings also show that 52.3% of the students are confident, and 17.4% are strongly confident that they will not use other people's ideas from the Internet without citing the source. This finding indicates that the majority of the students believe that they have no intention to plagiarize. However, the rest of the students show that they have the confidence to do such behavior. Understanding this finding, the researcher believes that the ELT students' Based on the findings, the ELT students also expect themselves not to let their friends copy their essays, as they have understood that letting their friends copy their essays is considered a plagiarism act. However, 25% of the students also believe that it is okay to plagiarize as long as their friends give permission to copy their essays. The researcher believes that the favorable attitudes that some of the ELT students show are influenced, again, by the lack of clarity about plagiarism.
In addition, most of the students also agree that it is important to set rules about plagiarism in writing classes so that the limitation and the understanding about plagiarism will be clear. However, there are no exact rules concerning plagiarism in their argumentative essay classes. According to , there should be thorough policies concerning plagiarism, including the definition, the various forms of plagiarism, and the methods to avoid and manage plagiarism issues in Indonesian universities. Moreover, the continuous discussion about plagiarism might be helpful to remind the students about how serious the plagiarism issue is, and to avoid any plagiarism issue among the students.
In relation to the findings that have been explained before, the majority of the students see a plagiarist as a person who does not have integrity. Auer and Krupar (2001) state that the students seem to believe that their grades should be based on effort, not on achievement. The researcher found that more than 95% of the students feel proud that they can finish their essays with their own efforts and ideas. Park (2004, as cited in Bahadori et al., 2012 states that based on the students' intentions, plagiarism can be categorized into two, intentional and unintentional plagiarism. Intentional plagiarism refers to a condition when a person is fully aware of the plagiarism and is willing to do it, while unintentional plagiarism is where a person plagiarizes due to his or her unawareness and lack of understanding.
It can be concluded that the unclear information about plagiarism leads to the favorable attitudes of the ELT students. The insufficient understanding of referencing or citation, the lack of writing skills, the unclear policies concerning plagiarism also become the factors. These conditions might raise confusion about what plagiarism is among ELT students, and also make them have less understanding of plagiarism. Therefore, this might lead them to perform plagiarism in writing argumentative essays. In other words, it can be seen that the favorable attitudes shown by the ELT students would lead the students to perform unintentional plagiarism.

Conclusion
Most of the ELT students have unfavorable attitudes towards plagiarism in terms of their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs. All of them understand that plagiarism is unacceptable and they agree that it should not be done. The data from the online questionnaire and the interview also show that even though there are many plagiarism issues in their surroundings, they are sure that they will try their best not to commit plagiarism. Their responses also show that they actually can avoid plagiarism in writing their essays if there is clear information and rules about it.
Moreover, this study has confirmed the lack of information about plagiarism and its various forms might lead the students to do self-plagiarism unintentionally. In this study, the lack of deterrence policies also influences the students' favorable attitudes. There are no exact rules about plagiarism in their argumentative essay classes, which tend to expose plagiarism acts more to the students. Students also sometimes tend to plagiarize when they face difficulties while composing their essays. The lack of summarizing and paraphrasing is found to contribute to the students' plagiarism acts. Moreover, the contribution of poor time management to the occurrence of plagiarism is also highlighted in this study. This study found that the favorable attitudes towards plagiarism that some students might show are led by their unawareness and insufficient understanding of plagiarism. In brief, the ELT students' attitudes towards plagiarism in writing argumentative essays in terms of their behavioral, normative, and control beliefs are unfavorable, and some students who show favorable attitudes tend to perform unintentional plagiarism rather than intentional plagiarism.
In order to deal with the favorable attitudes that some students have shown, there are several suggestions that could be done. First, there should be a discussion about plagiarism in argumentative writing classes, in which the argumentative writing instructors are expected to discuss more about the definition of plagiarism, the various form of plagiarism and the ways to avoid it, the rules of citation, and other things concerning plagiarism. Moreover, the instructors should set exact rules concerning plagiarism and make a decision together with the students about the consequences for the students who commit plagiarism in writing their essays. Furthermore, it is important to provide activities or exercises that encourage the students to practice their paraphrasing and summarizing skill, and improve their time management in writing because one of many reasons that encourage the students to perform both intentional and unintentional plagiarism in their lack of summarizing and paraphrasing. Lastly, conducting workshops or seminars about plagiarism and writing would be a good effort to socialize the students into plagiarism issues and writing. The training programs that facilitate the students to practice more in writing essays such as summarizing and paraphrasing, quoting and citing, finding and developing ideas and many more will likely help the students to improve their writing skills as well as to avoid plagiarism acts.